Alumni Spotlight: Kipper Fletez-Brant, MHS, PhD ’18
Kipper Fletez-Brant, MHS, PhD ’18, is a Senior Scientist at Genentech, a biotechnology company.
Kipper Fletez-Brant, MHS, PhD ’18 received his concurrent MHS in biostatistics from the Bloomberg School of Public Health and his PhD in Human Genetics from The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He is currently a senior scientist at .
Kipper chose to pursue his MHS in biostatistics, while concurrently working on his PhD, when he realized that so much of genetics depends heavily on statistics. “It seemed crazy to me to use a tool or technique without understanding why it worked,” he recalls.
How did your MHS degree in biostatistics prepare you for your career?
My career has depended on my training in biostatistics. As a data analyst, understanding which tool to use and why it works is critical for success in analyzing any dataset. Additionally, as a scientist working on a team in drug discovery, I am constantly communicating the results of my work to teammates coming from non-statistical backgrounds.
What has been your most satisfying job experience using your biostatistics background?
Because so many questions can be approached by statistical techniques, I am able to jump between projects, learning interesting facts about different domains, while helping colleagues get unstuck from their specific problem.
"I would encourage any student to do the MHS if they want to understand their data analysis better."
What reasons might you give to encourage a prospective student to get their concurrent MHS in biostatistics from the Bloomberg School?
I would encourage any student to do the MHS if they want to understand their data analysis better. The extra work more than pays off when you encounter new experiments or data types that do not have established methods for understanding them.
What was your favorite thing about living in Baltimore?
I really enjoyed blue crab! Spending an hour slowly picking and eating crab was an unexpected delight.
